Chinese VRFBs won't increase ex-China V demand. Here is why:
farwest,
more than a decade ago the Chinese decided to rely on Vanadium for LDES applications if possible, simply because they do own and control all necessary raw materials as opposed to Lithium where they have to import most of it from Australia and South America. Their own (2nd and 3rd tier) Li resources aren't enough to supply their EV battery chain let alone BESS.
The "12th 5-year-plan of national strategy" listed Hubei Pingfan as a "national pilot enterprise for vanadium" back in 2011. Two companies were commissioned to develop a supply chain for the production of V electrolyte from local (Chinese) sources. As you can see, this has been 12 years in the making, so no "flick of a switch" at all!
First they built a number of smaller VRFBs, then moved on to bigger systems, then to the "mammoth" 800MWh Dalian battery system and more recently announced plans for several more Dalian-like projects. They continue to roll out these batteries largely in sync with their ability to produce the required amount of Vanadium electrolyte.
I had explained my reasoning in an earlier post that included sources for validation. One was a 2017 article from Energy Storage News: https://www.energy-storage.news/chinese-governments-strategic-push-for-energy-storage-to-yield-large-flow-battery-projects/ You'll find many of the facts that I mentioned, confirmed in the article.
If you google a bit futher you'll find more, names of companies involved, the size and location of the Chinese BESS systems and so on. The Chinese were very clear about what their plan is and why. They aimed for as much independence as possible, something "the West" started paying attention to just recently.